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Cons:

Though Guild Wars as a whole bears the remarkable honor of being a successful and compelling MMO that manages to fly in the face of some of the genre's most basic tenets, its third "expansion" takes things even further. While many MMO newbies are rightfully loathe to jump into an established game around the time a major expansion is launching, Guild Wars Nightfall is an ideal point of entry for new players. With Guild Wars, the term "expansion" is used loosely; like the previous two installments of the game, Nightfall essentially stands alone, providing a self-contained play experience for newcomers, and compelling new content for veterans. Specifically to the advantage of new players, Nightfall introduces a system that allows you to control powerful NPC companions, which makes almost every aspect of the game's PvE experience much more accessible.

If Alliance battles and territory control were Guild Wars Factions' game-changing features, then Nightfall's would have to be the Hero units. Soon after you're done with the training mission, you're given access to an NPC who, for all intents and purposes, is as powerful and configurable as your own character. As you progress through the game's lengthy mission structure, you start to meet and recruit more and more of these characters, leading to a pretty wide-ranging roster by the time you've decently progressed. Heroes come with fixed primary professions, but you can change their secondary ones at will, and they have access to any skills you've unlocked throughout your whole account. You can set their attributes and skills to suit whatever roles you desire them to play, and you equip them as you see fit.

You also have a good deal of control over their actions in combat, at least theoretically. Via a small interface on your minimap, you can order their movements, and through an expandable element under your party bar, you can issue them commands and access their skill bars. The problem with this, however, is that in most situations, you're probably going to be too busy issuing commands to your own character to really effectively control your heroes. This sort of interaction is probably more viable if you're playing a support class like a Paragon or a Ritualist, but unless you're an extremely effective micromanager, it's going to be pretty challenging to play field marshal if you're running a more input-intensive profession.

Ultimately, though, Heroes are a welcome addition to players who want to quest without hooking up with other players. They're a definite step up from regular henchmen in terms of power, which really helps when it comes to the more challenging quests. They'll even serve you well if you try to "solo" some of the first few missions, provided you're both lucky, and know what you're doing. Make no mistake, though -- you're going to have to deal with real live people if you want to progress through the game's 20 campaign missions. When it comes to situations where coordination and reaction are vital (which these challenging missions typically call for), nothing beats a real human. (In most cases, at least.)